The Shelf
by Satan's Sweeties
Summary: The Shelf was no-man's land; the point of no return. Once something was on The Shelf, six-year-old Edward Elric knew it was slim that he'd get it back. It didn't stop him from trying, though. Modern AU. Six part series.
1. Bopped from the Top

"Brother, I don't think this is such a good idea," Alphonse said hesitantly, holding his teddy bear tighter as Edward scoffed and looked up at The Shelf. "What if you get hurt? What if you get really, really hurt and the doctor can't fix you and you're hurt forever?"

"Then I get his room," Envy said through a mouthful of Rice Krispies, smirking at his youngest half brother as Alphonse's golden-brown eyes widened and he let out something akin to a squeak. Swallowing, Envy glanced at Edward, who had made it to the second of the seven shelves that led to The Shelf. "I hope you fall, you idiot."

Edward risked a look behind him to scowl at the nine-year-old he refused to believe was even remotely related to him. "Shut up, damn it!" he shot back, sticking his tongue out.

Alphonse gasped, squeezing his bear mercilessly as he whispered, "You said a bad word, brother! Mommy said you're not s'posed to say bad words!"

"Just shut your mouth, brat," Envy deadpanned, shoveling another spoonful of cereal into his mouth. "Your voice is irritating me."

Meanwhile, Edward extended his arm out and waved it around until he could reach the next shelf, grabbing on with all his six-year-old might. For a minute, it seemed as though the determined tyke would actually reach The Shelf, but when he was three shelves away from it he slipped and came crashing down, landing smack dab on top of his little brother with an oomph.

Alphonse wiggled and cried under Edward as Edward rubbed his forehead and groaned. Realizing his position, he apologized profusely and got up off his brother, holding out a hand to help him up before scooping him up in a hug and trying to quiet him before their mother heard. "It's okay, it's okay, stop crying, stop crying..." he repeated, patting Alphonse's back until his sobs were reduced to mere sniffles. He pulled back, looking him in the eyes. "Better?"

"Uh-huh." He nodded, wiping his eyes.

"Good. Whatever you do, don't tell Mommy, okay?"

Envy cackled in the background as Alphonse wiped at his eyes again and muttered, "I won't."

(Of course, when Trisha asked later why Edward had a bump on his head and a scrape on his elbow, Alphonse was quick to sell him out by explaining everything while Envy tiptoed past her and stole a cookie from the jar.)

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>And so begins a short series of one-shots about kids and their crazy ideas.


	2. Hooked a Big One

"So... we meet again."

"Don't try it, brother," Alphonse warned, pausing his tea party on the floor with the neighbor girl, Winry Rockbell, to look over at his big brother and hope that he didn't try anything stupid again. "You already tried to get up there and you just got hurt! Don't do it again!"

Edward looked scandalized. "But that was when I was littler! I'm older now!"

"You're _still _six!" Winry said, pouting when Edward made a face at her.

"No, I'm six _and a half_! That means I'm smarter now 'cause I'm older and I know what to do to get what I want! Mommy says I'm really, really smart, so I'm gonna use my smarts and get my slingshot down from The Shelf!" Edward reasoned, grinning victoriously after finishing his tirade. His golden eyes widened as he let out an 'aha!' and scampered off to the garage.

Envy's amethyst eyes followed the pint-sized blond. "He'll probably just hurt himself again. Which is fine by me."

Smiling cutely, Winry said, "Hey, Envy! Do you want to pl—"

"_No_."

"Meanie!"

Just as Envy rolled his eyes at the little girl, Edward returned armed with a fishing pole and a step stool. Taking one look at the misguided boy he hated being related to, Envy smirked. "_This_ should be good."

Determined, Edward flung the fishing pole back over his shoulder and whipped it forward, completely missing the slingshot but knocking over the air freshener. Put off, he sulked for a moment before trying it again, missing his mark once more but refusing to give up. So he tried again and again, missing every single time until he finally reached the end of his patience and haphazardly tossed the pole over his shoulder.

"Ow!"

The good news was that he hooked something.

The bad news was that it was Winry's bottom lip.

Tears welled up in Winry's blue eyes as Edward gasped and dropped the fishing pole, rushing over to check on his friend while Alphonse patted her back to make her feel better. "I'm so sorry, Winry!" Edward apologized, gnawing on his fingernails nervously as tears slid down the blonde's face. "Are you okay?"

"She has a freaking _hook _in her _lip_, stupid!" Envy responded, unasked as always. "Does it _look _like she's okay?"

Trisha came rushing into the room, carrying a basket of tomatoes and looking extremely worried. "I heard crying!" she explained. "Is everything alright?"

One look at Winry said 'no.'

"Boys, what happened?" she asked, setting down her vegetable basket and attending to Winry the best she could without hurting her. Fortunately, the hook wouldn't do any permanent, serious damage; unfortunately, it was stuck in there pretty well.

"The Shelf," Edward replied. "The Shelf happened. I just wanted my slingshot, I swear! I didn't mean to hurt anybody!"

"Too bad you did," Envy mumbled, picking at his teeth with his pinky finger.

(Later, after Trisha had calmed Winry down enough to snip the fish hook in half and remove it from her lip, Winry refused to speak to Edward "ever again." That lasted about a week before she called the Elric house to "say sorry" for being a "meanie.")


	3. Wrath of Envy

At seven and a half-years-old, Edward was all of three-foot-eleven, not counting the height of his cowlick. Luckily, though his body's growth may have been slow, his determination to show The Shelf who was boss grew at an exponential rate. One day soon, surely, he would finally—finally, finally, finally—beat The Shelf and put an end to its evil reign of towering over him. Plus, he really just wanted his dang slingshot back.

"You're not gonna beat me this time!" he said in a sing-song voice, stacking up another phone book and wondering why they had so many phone books just lying around. "I will win this!"

He reached behind him blindly and, upon finding that he had used the last phone book, left the living room in search of a box or something; this, of course, resulted in the pile of phone books being left unattended and an opportune find for Envy, who decided to entertain himself by stealing one book and hiding it.

When Edward came back, clueless as to what Envy had done, he set the empty box he found on top of the pile and carefully climbed up to stand on the box, distributing his weight to the edges of the box to avoid falling through the flimsy cardboard and twisting an ankle. Ensuring he was stationed perfectly on his box, Edward looked up and reached with all he had.

Envy sat back and watched the hilarity unfold.

Even on the tippiest tiptoes he he could manage without falling, he _still _couldn't reach his slingshot—it just sat there, on The Shelf, awaiting Edward to come take it back and play with it again for the first time in weeks. Patience wearing thin, Edward grunted and stretched out his arm more in an attempt to somehow reach his goal.

"Maybe it'd work better if you jumped," Envy offered, settling back into the couch and propping his feet up on the table.

"I can't jump, stupid," Edward countered, still reaching for his slingshot. "I hafta keep my feet exactly where they are or I'll fall and get hurt."

Snorting, Envy rolled his eyes and muttered, "Lord knows we wouldn't want _that_," to himself. Smirking, he raised an eyebrow at the struggling blond and said, "I'm sorry—I wasn't aware of the fact that short people can't jump right."

Three...

Two...

One...

Edward's face flushed a dark shade of red as he whipped his head around and yelled, "I am _not _short, you loser! I'm not, I'm not, I'm _not_! And another thing—"

It was then that he realized his feet had moved during his rant and the cardboard buckled under him, sending him crashing to the floor as Envy busted a gut laughing at his younger sibling's expense. Burning with rage, Edward pulled himself to his feet and proceeded to chase Envy out the door and around the yard, screaming at him the entire time as the elder just giggled and outran him.

"C'mon, shorty! Get those stubby legs moving faster!"

"_I'm not short_! You're just stupidly tall! And stay still so I can hit you!"


	4. Foiled by the Babysitter

Lust Evans was Edward's babysitter of choice whenever his mother would go out for the day or night, because she was pretty, she was smart, and she was one of the nicest teenage girls he'd ever met in his eight years of life. She only lived a couple neighborhoods away, so she was usually available to babysit when needed.

Of course, Trisha had a back-up babysitter just in case, and Edward didn't like him one bit.

Whenever Lust was too busy to babysit, Trisha called up Roy Mustang, the fourteen-year-old that lived a few houses down the street, which usually perked Alphonse up—he'd taken a liking to Roy, always more than excited at the prospect of him coming over to babysit him and his big brother.

"Okay, boys," Trisha said, straightening out her dress and grabbing her purse, "Winry's mom, dad, Pinako and I are going out tonight, and Winry will be staying over here while we're gone, so that means you'll need a babysitter. Don't worry about Envy; he's spending the night at a friend's house."

Edward looked up at his mother from the LEGO space shuttle he was building and asked, "Is Lust gonna be here soon?"

Trisha shook her head. "Sorry, sweetie, but she had already made other plans for tonight. It wouldn't be fair to her to make her break them to babysit. Instead, Roy's coming over."

"Yay!" Alphonse squealed, hugging his stuffed bear to death and bouncing up and down.

"No!" Edward groaned. He crossed his arms over his chest and pouted.

Their mother smiled, ruffling Edward's hair before dropping a kiss on his and Alphonse's foreheads to bid them goodnight. Not long after, the doorbell rang and Trisha opened the door, smiling at the messy-haired teen standing in the doorway. "Oh, Roy!" she said, stepping aside to let him in. "You're right on time. There's money for pizza on the kitchen table and other information on the index card taped to the fridge. We'll be back around eleven, and the kids need to be in bed by nine-thirty."

"Sure thing, ma'am," Roy replied, and Trisha left.

Alphonse tapped on Roy's arm and said, "Me and Winry are gonna be in my room 'til dinner, 'kay?" Roy nodded, and Winry grabbed her friend's hand and ran upstairs, leaving Edward alone with Roy.

Awkwardly, Roy stood behind the boy and looked at whatever it was he was doing. "What are you building, Ed?"

"None of your business, jerk," Edward responded, adding another piece to his space shuttle.

"There's no need to be so short with me."

Whoops.

Something in Edward was on the verge of snapping as he gripped a LEGO hard enough to leave a mark on his hand and growled, "_Don't. Call. Me. Short._"

Up in Alphonse's room, he and Winry were coloring in pictures of dinosaurs with Winry's new 64-pack of Crayola crayons—with the sharpener, no less. Alphonse always loved Winry's crayons, and when he and his brother were younger they used to fight over who got to share her crayons with her, which evolved into who was going to marry her when they grew up. Eventually, Alphonse won that battle, but was promptly rejected by Winry, who said he was "just a kid." She also rejected Edward by saying that she didn't like-like boys that were shorter than her.

Just as Alphonse was about to put the finishing touches on his awesome Stegosaurus, he heard a loud and angry, "WHO ARE YOU CALLING SO SHORT HE COULD USE A LEGO AS A STEP STOOL?" drift up from downstairs and figured it was best to go check out the situation.

"I'll be right back, 'kay, Winry?" Alphonse said, standing up and heading toward the door. "I just gotta make sure that brother doesn't kill Mr. Roy. Or get himself hurt... _again_."

When Alphonse walked down the stairs and rounded the corner, he saw Edward, trying to charge at Roy, and Roy, holding Edward back by placing his palm on the boy's forehead. Edward, who looked unmistakeably angry, flailed his arms comically as Roy kept his would-be attacker at bay and Alphonse attempted not to laugh hysterically; that certainly wouldn't help the situation. Putting on a straight face, Alphonse rushed behind his brother and captured him in a big bear hug, despite Edward's incessant wiggling, dragging him away from Roy.

"Al!" Edward grunted, squirming more and more in his brother's death grip. "Let me at him!"

"Okay, brother," Alphonse said, never one for disobeying Edward, and released him.

Roy practically shrieked, "Hold him back! Hold him back!"

"Okay," Alphonse said, never one for disobeying authority, and grabbed Edward by the back of his shirt.

Edward was, predictably, less than pleased with this. "Let me at him!"

"Hold him back!"

"_Let me at him_!"

"_Hold him back_!"

Winry, who had come downstairs once the screaming had commenced, slapped herself on the forehead with her palm before dragging it down her face with a noise that was quite similar to 'ugh, men.' "Um, guys?" she said carefully, coming down another step. "Guys?"

"Why are you holding me back, Al?" Rage.

"Because Mr. Roy told me to!"

"Why are you letting him go, Alphonse?" Fear for one's life.

"Because brother told me to!"

Growing tired of the idiocy, Winry plugged her ears with her fingers and downright _screamed_, the sound shrill and nails-on-a-chalkboard enough to make Edward, Alphonse, and Roy stop right in their tracks. After she'd run out of air in her lungs—a good minute, minute-fifteen later—she crossed her arms over her chest and gave each of them The Look that her mother gave her father when he said or did something he found funny and she didn't. "How come you guys just can't get along?" she asked, cocking her head to the side and giving them a look that clearly said, 'I'm adorable. Listen to me.'

Recovering from the traumatic effects of Winry's scream, Edward pointed at Roy accusingly and said, "He started it! He called me short, which I'm _not_!"

"I did _not _call you short!" Roy defended, matching Edward's glare with one of his own. "I simply said that you were being short with me, after which I said you have a little bit of a temper problem. Nowhere in there did I call you short, though maybe you misheard me because the sound waves couldn't travel down that far!"

Gasping, Edward narrowed his golden eyes and muttered, "Cheap shot."

Roy smirked. "Couldn't resist."

Before Edward could move to sock the poop out of Roy, Winry cleared her throat and said, surprisingly softly, "Alphonse, can I talk to you for a bit in the other room?" Alphonse nodded, and just as Winry left the living room she turned back around and growled, "_Don't. Start. Anything_."

Sulking on the couch and death-staring Roy, Edward picked out key words from the dialogue Winry and Alphonse were having in the kitchen, like 'dinosaur,' 'stupid-head,' 'too touchy,' 'really a nice guy,' 'steams my clams,' and 'dinner-time.' By the time the two were done and had come back out, Roy was asleep on the couch opposite the one Edward was on while the blond busied himself with seeing how many M&Ms he could land in Roy's open and snoring mouth.

He was up to sixteen when Winry smacked him upside the head and Alphonse woke up a confused Roy, who chewed what was in his mouth and swallowed, no questions asked and no answers given. Rubbing the back of his neck, Roy looked over at a grinning and unequivocally adorable Alphonse who just blinked and asked, "Mr. Roy, can we have dinner soon?"

"Sure," Roy replied, running his tongue over his teeth in an attempt to find out what he had eaten as Edward cackled maniacally and Winry smacked him with her favorite plastic wrench. Roy grabbed a pad of paper and a pen. "What do you want on your pizza?"

"Pepperoni!" Winry piped up, momentarily pausing her beating on Edward to answer. "I want pepperoni, please!"

"But I don't like pepperoni pizza!" Edward whined, rubbing his head where Winry had hit him and pouting quite noticeably. "The pepperoni makes the pizza too greasy and then it makes more of a mess and then it's hard to clean up and making a mess on the carpet results in Mommy Having Words with me and Al!" Edward was, by this point, close to flailing. "I don't like Having Words with Mommy! It's not fun!"

Softly, Alphonse said, "I... I like pepperoni, too. Can we get pepperoni? Please?"

Roy said, "Sure," just as Edward stomped his foot and vehemently protested having pepperoni on his pizza.

(Not that anyone cared that he didn't like it—he was outnumbered three-to-one.)

Later, after the pizza had been eaten—Edward just sulked and picked off the pepperoni, dumping them on Winry's plate instead—and the trash had been taken out, the middle Elric child decided to get back to his plans of finally besting The Shelf. Oh, he had a plan now: he was going to try to vault off the couch and make a quick smash n' grab.

It was _genius_, just like him.

He backed up a good distance from the couch he was planning on using and got a running start, bare feet padding against the carpet before he reached his destination, put one foot up on the cushions, moved his other to the top of the couch's backrest, and leaped for it. But he found himself trapped when a rather large fishing net came down upon his head and caused him to come crashing down on the couch.

Glaring at Roy from between the netting, he said, "What gives, you jerk?"

Raising an eyebrow, Roy waved the index card with instructions on it around and replied, "The card specifically says that 'nothing is to be taken down from the shelf in the living room, whether you or the kids do the taking down.' Clear as day."

"Well..." Pursing his lips, Edward thought of a lie quickly. "Those are old directions. They changed just a little bit ago."

Roy blinked, face blank as he turned the card over and read it aloud. "'No, they didn't. Don't listen to Edward.' I guess that's figured out."

Fishing net still covering him, Edward slumped face-first into the couch and sighed dejectedly, inwardly calling Roy mean names and swearing revenge the next time he had to babysit him and Alphonse. He was perfectly content with lying there until bedtime, but Winry decided to come skipping into the room with a grin on her face and a crayon in her hand.

"Hey, Edward!" she chirped, stopping in front of the couch and waiting for him to acknowledge her.

Edward lifted just his head, giving her a Look. "I don't wanna color. Go bother Al."

"But he's already—"

"Go away!"

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>I originally had the entire conversation between Alphonse and Winry, but this chapter was already too long so I left it out. Here it is, if you want to read it.

"What do you wanna talk about, Winry?" Alphonse asked, sitting down at the kitchen table as she came back from no doubt threatening Edward and Roy. "Is it about brother and his... temper?"

She rolled her eyes and sat down next to him. "Isn't it _always_? But yeah, it's like I can't even color in a _dinosaur_ without him getting mad at _someone_ for saying _something_ they _didn't_ and he _always_ takes things_ out of context_ and it's just...! It's just really, _really_ annoying! He's such a _stupid-head_ sometimes!"

Alphonse nodded, patting her hand and replying, "I know brother can be a _little_ bit too touchy about being kinda short, but it's not as though he does it on purpose or anything. He's just not very good with 'expressing himself through a productive outlet,' or so Mommy says. But for some reason, he just doesn't like Mr. Roy. Which is weird, 'cause Mr. Roy is really a nice guy; brother just won't give him a chance."

"I noticed that, too," Winry said, balling a little fist up and shaking it in irritation. "I just wish Edward would be nice to people every once in a while! Ooo, that boy just... just... just _steams my clams_! Ugh! It's like he makes it a _point_ to make everybody he comes across mad or something!"

Still patting the back of the hand that was palm-down on the table, Alphonse nodded in agreement again and said, "Well, it's almost dinner-time, so we should probably go tell Mr. Roy what we want on our pizza."

Winry calmed herself and followed Alphonse out of the kitchen and back into the living room, where Edward was tossing M&Ms into Roy's mouth because he'd fallen asleep and was snoring. Sighing, she smacked him upside the head while Alphonse walked over to Roy and shook him gently to wake him up from his nap.


End file.
